On Fri, Sep 21, 2012 at 8:58 AM, <thorso...@lavabit.com> wrote: > Hi, > > list = [{'1': []}, {'2': []}, {'3': ['4', '5']}] > > I want to check for a value (e.g. '4'), and get the key of the dictionary > that contains that value. > (Yep, this is bizarre.) > > some_magic(list, '4') > => '3' > > What's the functional way to do it? > Is it possible to do it with a one-liner?
I'm thinking here of a list comprehension, filter(), and next() to grab the first element. Let's see... By the way, I wouldn't use 'list' as a variable name; you shadow the built-in type. lst = [{'1': []}, {'2': []}, {'3': ['4', '5']}] def find_n(n,dic): for key,searchme in dic.items(): if n in searchme: return key next(filter(None,[find_n('4',x) for x in lst])) That gets the result, but probably not in the cleanest way. I'm not sure off-hand if Python has a convenient way to curry a function, but if so, you could make the filter call rather simpler. Note that this is written for Python 3, where filter() returns an iterator, thus the algorithm is lazy and thus efficient (a very Australian way to do things). ChrisA Proudly Australian, proudly lazy! -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list